Community health center opens in Milford

Wednesday

Mar 12, 2014 at 12:01 AM

By Lindsay CorcoranDaily News Staff

MILFORD – A year in the making, the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center finally opened its doors on Monday and began offering primary care services to local residents.Last February, officials at the Kennedy Community Health Center, with locations in Framingham and Worcester, announced plans to open a satellite office at 42 Cape Road in Milford to help increase access to primary care services and decrease pressure on Milford Regional Medical Center’s emergency room.Paula Green, the organization’s vice president for advancement, said Monday was a “soft opening” and that they plan to expand operations in the coming months.“We do have staff there and we are seeing patients, but we’ll be doing a big opening event later this spring,” Green said. “We are very excited to be in the community.”Green said a smaller-than-normal staff is operating the 5,000-square-foot facility that was newly constructed to house the center, but that they’ll be gearing up as their patient load increases.Many of the patients were already receiving services from the Kennedy Community Health Center’s other locations. About 800 people from the Milford area were estimated to have received care from the organization's other locations.Green said they are receiving more patients through referrals from local physicians and from Milford Regional Medical Center’s emergency room.“We’re working with the emergency department there to have them refer patients who don’t have primary care physicians to us,” Green said.The new health center will provide Milford residents with primary and preventative medical care, access to mental health professionals, case management, care coordination, lab service and help with obtaining benefits. The center will collaborate with other organizations to improve the overall health in the community.The facility, the first and only community health center in Milford, was built with funding from both the MetroWest Health Foundation and The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts.Contact Lindsay Corcoran at 508-634-7582 or lcorcoran@wickedlocal.com. Follow her on Twitter @LacorcMDN.